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Wednesday, March 1, 2017

R1b-M269 in Afanasievo

Back in 2015, Allentoft et al. published four Afanasievo genomes that finally confirmed beyond any doubt that the enigmatic Afanasievo people were migrants to the Altai region from Eastern Europe.
However, all four samples came from female remains, which left us wondering about the Y-haplogroup composition of the Afanasievo population. As it turns out, a French study from 2014 found that three Afanasievo individuals belonged to R1b, with two classified as R1b-M269 (see here).

150 comments:

Yamnaya was exclusively R1b, now we see the same with Afanasievo – only R1b.This suggests that as early as 3500 BC or earlier there were two distinct groups on the steppe, R1b and R1a dominated, which didn’t mix because probably spoke very different languages, had different religions and cultures.

Yes, Yamnaya and bros (Q1a) just follow steppe to east... Never moved probably past Denipro. So, those west yamnaya (R1a) had the same admix as the women R1b in eastern part took for themselves? - Well, West Yamnaya will be very low on CHG, for sure.

Does the 'Neolithic' Lokomotiv R1a-Z93 really have a problem of decending being a migration from Europe? I know I read that paper over several times and it sounds like there is no timing problem at all.

I think we are dealing with Indo-Iranian related groups here . While Xiaohe , was Tocharian .

There is an interesting remark on Tarim :

Mair claims that "the earliest mummies in the Tarim Basin were exclusively Caucasoid, or Europoid" with east Asian migrants arriving in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin around 3,000 years ago while the Uyghur peoples arrived around the year 842.[4] In trying to trace the origins of these populations, Victor Mair's team suggested that they may have arrived in the region by way of the Pamir Mountains about 5,000 years ago.

Mair has claimed that:

The new finds are also forcing a reexamination of old Chinese books that describe historical or legendary figures of great height, with deep-set blue or green eyes, long noses, full beards, and red or blond hair. Scholars have traditionally scoffed at these accounts, but it now seems that they may be accurate.[14]

As a layman, I find it difficult to understand why either R1a or R1b almost always seem to dominate any given archaeological site to the exclusion of the other. Anyone mind explaining what gives? Where is the R1a in Yamnaya? Where is the R1b in Andronovo? If all of these cultures spawned from one mother culture, wouldn't we see a healthy mix of R1a/R1b in all of them?

Some of these discussions are like a broken record. I'm not surprised that Davidski doesn't want to repeat his reasoning in every thread.

@Davidski

Do you think you could make a page listing a broad summary of known ancient populations and migrations and link each part to the relevant blog post or discussion? It doesn't have to be overly detailed but it would be nice to have an outline of events so we could just refer to it when someone wants proof that Yamnaya can't be from south-central Asia and the like.

I find fascinating the question then, who were these Afanasievo people?.

Interestingly as we know, Xiaohe also had the M Mtdnas .

I think BMAC and N India should have good amounts of R1a . It makes sense since CWC , Sintashta,Andronovo,Tarim area , even Srubnaya didn't have any R1b .R1b is also not important for Indo-Aryan groups .

Indo-Aryans require EBA Autosomal structure to have an 'ancestral pop' . So Yamnaya, Afana.(Actually Yamnaya was discarded long before) is discarded now along with Sintashta,Andronovo from before.

We all know Archaeologically its also not possible for Andronovo to be the source of Indian IEs. Then we see also that Ulug Depe showing Indian like EBA ancestry. Its also hilarious to claim CWC is source of Tocharians! .

I think SC Asia have a great chance , with sites like Sarazm , things can be fascinating . Unless we have to imagine that Aryans came from Siberia! like Bal Gangadhar Tilak suggested ;) , its possible since now we have R1a-M417 from Lake Baikal! .

Perhaps it's because R1a and R1b belonged to two distinct populations since the LGM and they only mixed in some later groups such as western European IE (Germanic and Italo-Celtic).

I find it striking how nearly all R1a since the EBA seems to be linked to or is well correlated with various IE groups or with groups later absorbed into the Turkic expansions.

Meanwhile, R1b is associated with several non-IE groups such as Chadic speakers and some other groups in Africa, the Basques, and probably the non-IE Iberians during the Iron Age. There's also M73 and some older surviving lineages like M335 and PH155 that may not be connected to IE expansions. I think this all hints to R1a being the original lineage of PIE and R1b only mixed into some groups after PIE began expanding.

There are a few ways that might explain. You can even think about it and you would come up with the most obvious ways yourself.

It could be that having a certain Y-haplogroup simply confers a biological advantage. This is extremely unlikely.

It could be that there is a sex-linked dominant reason that confers a biological advantage. So, anything that gives an advantage to a son a father, but disadvantages the daughter of a father. This is possible, for example lactose tolerance could advantage sons over daughters. Both sons and daughters get the advantage as a young child, but later, daughters are disadvantaged when they have their own children, because the children could compete for milk longer.

The most obvious reason is that sometimes cultures develop a culture-linked dominant reason that confers a biological advantage. The most obvious is that anyone in a socially special family can have more children, and then those children gain the same social advantage.

In that case, the females can never gain the same biological advantage as the males, because they have a limited ability to produce children. So, males in certain families have many many more children, and his children inherit the social status, and then his male children are able to have many many more children, and so on.

The fact that you see very few random Y haplogroups, but many mt haplogroups joining in over time means that either the daughters with the special status were not allowed to have sex outside of this special social status group, or that the status was only passed to sons.

Most likely then. There was a special social status group that was passed down through the paternal line and allowed them to have many many more children than the average man could have.

This special social status could be as simple as a requirement to pay a price to someone to have a child, coupled with the ability to inherit wealth from parents. But in pre-genetic testing times, that would require a lot of trust. If it was true, it could be a reason for the spread of certain phenotypic traits that people could use as a marker of parentage.

I had this doubt from beginning , though I may be proven wrong . BUT indeed it looks like the R1a was the original PIE lineage . The fact that the big Indic group lacked R1b, was already a big clue from the beginning . R1a is the ONLY common link throughout the IEs worldwide .

@ Plains Wanderer"Meanwhile, R1b is associated with several non-IE groups such as Chadic speakers and some other groups in Africa, the Basques, and probably the non-IE Iberians during the Iron Age. There's also M73 and some older surviving lineages like M335 and PH155 that may not be connected to IE expansions. I think this all hints to R1a being the original lineage of PIE and R1b only mixed into some groups after PIE began expanding".

You are mixing too many wrong things: 1) it isn't true that R1b is linked with Chadic languages, what also Cruciani said: R-V88 comes from Italy and African R-V88 aren't older than 5000 years, 2) R-M73 is older in Western Europe and Asians descend from two recent haplotypes, one from Turks, but migrated to Central Asia from Samara; 3) R-M335 is overwhelmingly in Central Europe and Italy and is older than R-PH155 found in Central Asia and India, and it has nothing to do with the R-L389+ subclades, and so on.

@ Nirjhar0007 (said James Bond)

Are all those white men with blond hair and blue eyes really from India?Anyway these R-M269-L23 were overwhelmingly "Europeans" as Hollard says...

Note that I did not speculate where R1a and R1b originally came from, just that they were distinct populations.

Are you saying that the ancestors of Chadic V88, Turkic M73, and of M335 originally spoke IE languages? Because if not, my point still stands: that R1b might have originally been non-PIE and only certain subclades of R1b such as L21 and U152 adopted and spread IE languages.

It is difficult to understand the pathway of the haplogroups, if you add the languages, things become more and more difficult. My theory is that R1b1 (as Villabruna 14000 years ago demonstrates) comes from the Italian Refugium. Certainly, after the Younger Dryas, R-V88, R-L389+, R-L73, R-P297, R-M335 expanded from there. I supposed that also the Indo-European languages, how they could be then, could have been born there, above all whether it will be demonstrated that also R1a-M420 and subclades was there (and possibly I/J). But languages are a complex phenomenon and we haven't aDNA for that. Let's demonstrate genetics. After we'll speak also about languages.

"If all of these cultures spawned from one mother culture, wouldn't we see a healthy mix of R1a/R1b in all of them?"

If the mother culture sprang up in the border zone between the two then maybe the majority of the ones who went west (initially) were more from one side and the ones who went east (initially) were more from the other side.

Also, if two close cultures had men who always stayed a part of their own culture, but encouraged women to join either culture, than the autosomal and mitochondrial genetics would very soon become identical, while the Y haplogroups stated distinct.

The question is whether the language and other parts of the culture would merge as well.

KK,I think suggesting R1a for original PIE makes some sense , of course we have to consider M417 mainly, since its the dominant surviving clade out of others . Its possible though the older clades were also related to IEs.

I totally admit that this is very naive or childish view , but perhaps simplest things are the closest to the truth !.

It also saves us, from the complex and artificial attempts to relate two completely unrelated looking groups i.e. R1a and R1b . Considering the data we are mostly having . But maybe I am totally wrong , just a thought .

Perhaps the issue is we only have samples from Kurgans (or do we have others?). It seems PIE society was segregated into three major classes of people: warriors, priests, and artisans (craftsmen, farmers, herders, etc.). This seems to be a theme in almost all IE connected cultures well into the middle ages (until the fall of monarchies).

In any case, if we're only sampling warriors (and finding no priests or serfs), then perhaps this explains the disparity. As Karl mentions, there's no doubt that the Chief of each tribe was a member of the warrior class, and as a result, he had more breeding opportunities than the other classes (after all women like status, lol). And we know the "throne" was passed to only males of the Warrior King's lineage, which means we will only find men of his haplogroup buried in Kurgans. That all makes sense.

So, I suppose the question is, were's the priests and serfs? Were they cremated, perhaps? If so, that really throws a wrench into the gears doesn't it?

The only way there can be a divide in yamnaya between R1b and R1a is if R1b entered Yamnaya via the south caucasus and R1a could not because north of the caspian sea was still under the ice-belt . It would mean that yamnaya was populated firstly by R1b. It would then mean eastern Europe was firstly populated by R1b before R1a ............and it would also make sense that the barbarian invasions of the Roman empire where heavily R1b over R1a.

As for those who still believe R1b or R1a created PIE, you are wrong because it would make no sense for either to go to Anatolia , which is the first linguistic split from PIE at 4000BC before going to Eastern Europe. Clearly PIE was created by many different Hapolgroups living together in the north Caucasus area

Within this orientalization project, German linguists used comparative and etymological linguistics to show that the Slavic culture was underdeveloped and many items were borrowed from the Germanic neighbours. If there was a word in the ancient vocabulary, this indicated a knowledge of the thing. For instance, if "sowing" had existed in the archaic form of a language, then those people must had been familiar with cultivation. German linguists argued that, since the Slavs were an incapable stock, similar words and terms with close roots in Slavic and Germanic languages could not be of Slavic origin. These various and numerous terms in Slavic languages must have been early borrowings from proto-German. The German side compiled a long list of items including plough, tvarog (a kind of cheese) and terms for milk, livestock, cattle, plough, bread, honey, wax, house and kniaz' (prince).

National Identities in Soviet Historiography: The Rise of Nations under StalinPage 58Harun Yilmaz

In other words if this really sounds "childish" for you, you are the victim of propaganda (aka PIE "reconstruction" and sound "laws").

Allentoft et al (2015) already drew the conclusion that the much younger Tarim basin mummies were not sprung from the earliest wave through autosomal analysis. This implies there were at least two movements eastwards. The latter being R1a1, and the earlier being R1b. I'm not certain that R1a1 was even around, or that far east at the time of Afanasievo or even eastern Yamnaya. I guess we need to see more data. R1b has always been the slightly older brother.

EBA in South Asians is closer to Afanasievo than to Andronovo. Andronovo is different from Afanasievo because of Western/Caucasus expansions.

Afanasievo is leaning exclusively (for now) R1b.South Asians do not have Andronovo DNA.

Ergo, EBA in South Asians did not come from Afanasievo. And R1a did not arrive in South Asia with Yamnayans or Andronovo/Afan.

This leads to at least three options:

1) PIE did not come from R1a or R1b, but J2. @Nirjhar J2 is present is UC Indians. 2) R1a is source of PIE and did not come from Yamnaya, Andronovo, Afanasievo.3) PIE came from several haplogroups, likely Caucasus area.

There are two potential locations for R1a. And I'm fine with both because they've made sense from the very beginning, unlike Yamnaya.

@Gioiello is correct - we can determine the genetics independent of languages for now.

One thing certain, R1a does not come from anywhere near Europe. R1a was the invasion that pushed R1b to the oceans of the Atlantic.

Did you all notice that in Khvalynsk we have R1b1 AND R1a1 in the same area?

So, an educated guess is that those two haplogroups lived pretty much together for long time and the divion between cultures merely dominated by only one of those two lineages are only due to the chieftains offsprings.

Please Atridr, spare me the comment full of Lord of the rings fantasy about an invasion: R1a seems to be in the East European and steppe area from the Mesolithic (see also the Karelian samples)... so what invasion are you talking about?

@ AWood wrote: "Ahh I get it now, so Afanasievo is no longer a PIE related culture because some posters didn't like the outcome? I never knew the answers were so easy!"

I remember when the first results from Yamna were out: a lot of people was astonished (and I think nearly to cry like babies). After a second (just the time to dry their tears), some of those heroes say that Yamna wasn't PIE, because R1b can't be linked with PIE. Good science!

@Arzya“you are the victim of propaganda (aka PIE "reconstruction" and sound "laws")”.

Not only he.There are problems with defining Proto-Indo-European. The most logical definition would be: it is the proto-language which links India and Europe. There is only one language which fits this definition. It is Indo-Slavic, i.e. the language from which Baltic, Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages originated and were spoken in India and Europe. This language correlates well with R1a-Z645 expansion.Germanic tribes didn’t have contacts with Indo-Iranians. They had contacts with Slavs, but Germanic scholars don’t want to admit it.

Listen to what top Germanic scholar Guus Kroonen is saying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xQNVexhSJQ&feature=youtu.be&t=207

“Slavs were barbarians to Germanic people…You don’t borrow from barbarians, that’s the rule.”

This is why proto-Germanic is based on some BS reconstructions from some BS PIE language which never existed and never was spoken by anybody.

@DavidskiPlease do inform me of where my insanity comes from. While you are it, please tell me why R1a left no mark - no mark at all - in all of Western Europe. Why did R1b disappear from Central Asia and shows no presence in South Asia? And please show me the great plains that horses love so much in Europe. Horses don't thrive in the forests and neither in the frost.

On a tangent, also tell me why all the oldest recorded Indo-European languages are not in Europe.

@capra internetensisYou've resorted to insulting me. You should take it down a notch.

@Rob I think that in respect to the Mesolithic, we are looking at very small tribes with movements across the entire Steppe mostly driven by the movement of game. In other words, reaching that far back is not useful - in the immediate - until a more solid grasp of the Bronze Age is had.

@myself"Alternatively both were mammoth steppe hunters separated by some kind of climactic barrier south of the Urals which disappeared as the world got warmer."

actually looking at the maps from the mammoth herds post again

http://eurogenes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/following-mammoth-herds.html

perhaps a more likely scenario is:

1) different mammoth clades imply a barrier south of Urals until (some date)2) western branch of mammoth killed off -> western branch of mammoth hunters settling down around the Black/Caspian Seas as *sedentary* HGs3) eastern branch carry on hunting mammoth4) barrier south of Urals disappears with warmer climate -> eastern mammoth spread back west -> "followed by* eastern mammoth hunters so the eastern mammoth hunters spread west *above* the now settled R1b5) so the eventual layering on the steppe ends up north/south rather than east/west

(either way the main point is *if* PIE started on the border between the two then there is no mystery)

After Khvalynsk we see certain subclades of R1a and R1b restricted to specific archeological cultures, in other words clans. But this may be misleading to some degree, because most of the burials are those of elites.

More sampling of the steppe, steppe-derived cultures, and a wider cross section of each archeological culture will clear up a lot of things, and demonstrate more clearly the expansion of Yamnaya-like populations from the steppe in almost all directions, carrying either R1a, R1b or both.

@DavidskiNice try. You try that same pompous crap with all the other kids? You remind me of OIT believers; being obnoxious and pompous instead of facing questions. Fact is, you can't answer them and they scare you so you insult.

@Greydifferential competitive advantageHow convenient. Also, convenient that R1a/R1b split along satem-centum lines with some few exceptions.

@Nirjhar007 - the Tarim mummies are almost all R1a but they lived long before Tocharian is attested. Those mummies likely do have roots in Indo-Iranian groups, but you shouldn't assume that no other Indo-European groups arrived in the Tarim basin afterwards. In the last 1,500 years the region has gone from Tocharian, to Turkish, and now to Chinese speaking. I don't think it's wise to assume that the 2,500 years preceding that were pure statis.

Modern Uighurs are 3-10% R1b and 22-35% R1a. That's a lot of R1a, but a lot less than the 11/12 with the Tarim mummies. Maybe the sample size means R1b was just missed, but either way there's clearly been a lot of Y-DNA turnover in the region over the years, and it certainly seems plausible to attribute R1b and Tocharian languages to a late bronze age / early iron age migration. Especially when you consider that when Tocharians appear in the historical record they are surrounded by Indo-Iranian groups on nearly all sides. It's not unreasonable to posit that they were the interlopers in a previously Indo-Iranian domain.

3-10% R1b is enough to bring a language too - migrations are a ship of Theseus, and the first Tocharians in the Tarim Basin may already have been ethnically diverse. There are certainly plenty of Indo-Iranian populations with less than 10% R1 of any sort.

@Grey - "How convenient. Also, convenient that R1a/R1b split along satem-centum lines with some few exceptions."

It actually makes sense for satem and centum to split that way.

Suppose the proto-IE group is mostly R1b, with some R1a and some Q. As the first IE groups expand, each leaves with a different mix of these haplogroups. Because IE society is very patriarchal and due to founder effects, many groups tend to be dominated by one haplogroup - mostly R1b, but a few by R1a as well. These initial departing groups are the ancestors of the centum languages.

One group that happens to be dominated by R1a develops satemization. They then undergo a secondary expansion - spreading back across lands previously occupied by their R1b centum cousins, mostly replacing them and their language.

If only everybody accepted that female kidnapping, probably slavery even, was as commom as shots of gin are today.So groups of men raided and stole womem. Their children were... Mixed. And some womem always manage to runaway back to the village of her parents with her son which had a diferent ydna haplogroup. It takes a ton of more samples to really clear this level of details.

I don't know why you're full of shit. I suspect it's a mixture of confirmation bias on your part, because it seems that all you want to to here do is to confirm for yourself that the steppe hypothesis is wrong, and some pretty fucking awesome ignorance.

In any case, I suppose it's my duty to expose the commentators here who are full of shit, so that people who honestly want to learn are not confused by you. So that's what I'm doing, and I couldn't care less whether you find this offensive or not.

I also need to underline the fact that despite your wishful thinking, you have not in any way made any dent in the steppe hypothesis.

R1a and R1b are both present on the ancient Western Steppe, and are by far the dominant Y-haplogroups in all of the Bronze Age steppe groups pinned years ago as early Indo-European based on historical linguistics and archeology.

Moreover, R1a-rich Corded Ware appears very closely related to R1b-rich Yamnaya, and indeed one of the earliest Corded Ware samples we have could be Yamnaya.

Not sure why you refuse to understand this and apply it to the PIE debate? Maybe you don't want to, because it's not in line with your confirmation bias efforts here? But like I say, I need to point out how utterly hopeless and full of shit you are, so that you don't mess things up for the honest people here.

The point you continually miss is that there is little evidence that horses play a major role in Yamnaya or CWCand you're missing the positive evidence for why they expanded- productive economy ; not imaginary cowboys and Indians movie scenes

"The point you continually miss is that there is little evidence that horses play a major role in Yamnaya"

I'm coming at it from seeing a youtube lecture of one of the big name guys running round the steppe trying to find evidence of bridles like it's the critical problem and pointing out the very famous raiding and scouting Numidian cavalry from the classical era didn't use bridles (or saddles or stirrups) so maybe it's not so critical evidence after all.

@DavidskiI'm going to save that comment you just vomited on your own blog.

If this wasn't such a sensitive insecurity of yours, you'd have noticed the full spectrum of my comments. You truly would make every OIT-believer proud, for you talk exactly like them. My comments all had to do with PIE, which you know shit-all about. You know about genetics and nothing about languages, so get off your wooden pony and put on big boy pants.

The steppe theory was good for me, until it wasn't - because of evidence.

You obviously are clueless with respect to geography and have no clue where the Steppe starts or stops.

Just a quote I grabbed from the Afanasievo Wiki citing the Allentoft study. I probably shouldn't have paraphrased but the Allentoft data looked at Andronovo which is represented by the second wave of IE. I don't remember exactly the citing of the Tarim mummies in the paper, and perhaps I should have stated it differently.

"Allentoft et al. (2015) study also confirms that Afanasevo culture was replaced by second wave of Indo-European migrations from Andronovo culture during late Bronze Age and early Iron Age.[1][note 1] Tarim mummies were also found to be genetically closer to Andronovo culture[1] than to Yamnaya culture or Afanasevo culture.[1][9]"

I don't care who sees themselves as what or how they can be pigeon holed based on their arguments here.

Anyone who wants to post here better make sure they've done their homework, so that their posts aren't strewn with errors and idiotic arguments that are so stupid that it's hard work even to post one line responses.

And what are you up to in this thread exactly? What's this crap about M417 or maybe even Z645 or Z93 in Neolithic Siberia? What are these fantasies? Who in your opinion finds them useful?

You're just beginning to understand the R1a phylogeny. Do not make the mistake of thinking you know as much about the topic as me or many others here.

HEHEHEHE , R1a was the original PIE , sooner or later you will all admit it! ( Am I talking like Dave here?, lol) .

I know some early Samara Khvalynsk burials had R1a1 with R1b1 , but its highly likely that the R1a was intrusive there , the area was starting to become R1a only from Srubnaya times ,which was kicking out the R1b . We also may remember that intrusive J y-dna , which also showed no difference autosomally (IIRC) .

R1b spoke a non-IE language originally and that's why we don't see much appearance of R1a and R1b together ! throughout! . Only in later stages when assimilation were complete .

There is also no need to connect the Kentum with R1b , hell Xiaohe was R1a...

After having read the paper of Mallory on Tocharians it seems to me clear that the R-L23-Z2103 of Samara spoke the IE language which became Tocharian and migratd Eastward forming R-L23-Z2103-CTS9733 and other minor subclades found in Asia as R-Z2106 etc. Their origins were of course from Central Europe after the migration out of the Alpine Refugium where centum IE was forming. Some of the Samara R-L23-Z2103 formed above all R-L277 and R-L584 migrating to the Caucasus and Anatolia (ancestors of the Hittite?) but also back to Western Europe and may be the ancestors of Italo-Celtic mixing with the other subclades remained in loco. Satem languages were linked with R1a.

"Meanwhile, R1b is associated with several non-IE groups such as Chadic speakers and some other groups in Africa"

That's silly. From the fact that other groups possess R1b you can't conclude that it isn't original to IE, too. Proto-IE weren't born from the ground, with wholly new haplogroups, and no connection to other populations.

And R1a appears among Siberians, Mongolians, as well as Turkic and Dravidian speakers.

"the Basques"

possess as much steppe admixture as their IE neighbors.

"and probably the non-IE Iberians during the Iron Age."

No evidence of that.

"I think this all hints to R1a being the original lineage of PIE and R1b only mixed into some groups after PIE began expanding."

Are we back in 2005, when there was no ancient DNA around?

Both the more ancient IE groups are almost pure R1b, with no R1a thus far, and R1b is already seen in the steppe among their EHG ancestors. R1b appears in the Yamnaya prior to any geographic expansion beyond their original country. R1a only starts being associated with autosomal steppe admixture later on, with populations - the Corded Ware, the Srubna - that are either later in time or the result of geographical expansion. So, if between R1b and R1a there's only one haplogroup that is original to IE, it's R1b, and if R1a is the one that became associated with temporal or geographical expansions.

R1a and R1b dominate Western Europe, USA and Australasia. R1b sits at about 70% and R1a is the next most significant group. Also look at where the genetic testing companies started and are most popular today geographically.

People are most interested in themselves.

Also the R1b story is excitingly controversial and historically important for Europe.

Mesolithic R1s in East Europe were probably para-pre-PIE speakers. By pre-PIE I mean the language of EHG folks before they admixed with Basal Eurasians.

Here it is an example.

""Proto-Berber shows features that clearly distinguish it from all other branches of Afroasiatic, but modern Berber languages are relatively homogeneous. Whereas the split from the other known Afroasiatic branches was very ancient, on the order of 10000~9000 years ago, according to glottochronological studies,[2] Proto-Berber might be as recent as 3000 years ago.""

Basically this mean that Berbers splited from PAA some 12000 years ago and remained isolated somewhere is West Africa. During this long period of isolation their language remained in the AA frames. So why haplogroup E-M35 can keep his language while R1 can't?

I remember that there was old data (or claims about data) about 9 out 10 Minusinsk basin Afanisevo samples being YHg R1a, but of course I cannot find that now. Is thre anybody else remembeing that? Was that fake?

I have discussed a lot with Berbers on Facebook blogs, and I wouldn't give for discounted that the E-M81 of to-day are the descendants of the ancestors of 14200 years ago. They, as also E-L19, may have come from elsewhere, being also deeply rooted in Southern Europe and also the Isles. We need other data and above all aDNA, as for I1*, come out after a bottleneck of 18000 years. Very likely it came from Northern Europe, but where did he live during the bottleneck?

We have no idea what those prehistoric people spoke. We can guess, but they are only at best educated guesses.

So far as I know the oldest known "Indo European" language is Hittite (Turkey) from around 1500 BCE. None of the older cultures are known to speak Indo European. None. Whatsoever. There is absolutely no evidence of any kind. Nothing.

A few have evidence of untranslatable script that looks a lot like heiroglyphics to me. Vinca (first found in Romania) and supposedly found in France alongside cave paintings looks like the first European script. But we cant translate it. We dont know the language at all.

http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/writingorigin.htm

Even the name "Indo-European" people is pure speculation. Ancient Harappan Indus (indian) has never been translated and it looks nothing like Hittite cuneiform. But it is possible that the written language forms developed separately after the oral language was well established.

The current thinking however is that Indus is not an even an Indo European language but a Dravidian language. Which to me makes sense with Sankrit entering later or being confined to the north. (ducks for cover)

So we have Hittite, and no Hittite has ever been genetically tested so we know nothing about their genetic relationships with any other regions. Not that genetics has much to do with language. My best guess is that they were... Turkish.

Which brings me back to my main point. That the connection between language and genetics is loose at best, wildly deceiving at worst.

In terms of regions this language group stretched from east asian Tocharian to Western Europe to Sankrit India. It is now truly global. Indo European as a name never made sense and does not make sense now. We need another name for the language family. TransEurasian, Steppish or something similar.

Equally "Indo-European people" makes no sense genetically except as unreliable evidence for an theory. Languages are not people. As attested by the Caribbean, Phillipines and Central America. Even in Ireland/Britain with the so called Saxon/Celtic divide, that wasn't.

English became the lingua franca in some areas because the English suck at languages, had a malleable language and were influential traders.

For all we know the "Indo European" languages spread across the Europe in the Greek classical era as a trading language. Languages can change fast, as Chaucer illustrates, along with any number of pidgin languages. (ducks and runs rapidly away as fast as she can).

We have no idea what those prehistoric people spoke. We can guess, but they are only at best educated guesses.

So far as I know the oldest known "Indo European" language is Hittite (Turkey) from around 1500 BCE. None of the older cultures are known to speak Indo European. None. Whatsoever. There is absolutely no evidence of any kind. Nothing.

A few have evidence of untranslatable script that looks a lot like heiroglyphics to me. Vinca (first found in Romania) and supposedly found in France alongside cave paintings looks like the first European script. But we cant translate it. We dont know the language at all.

http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/writingorigin.htm

Even the name "Indo-European" people is pure speculation. Ancient Harappan Indus (indian) has never been translated and it looks nothing like Hittite cuneiform. But it is possible that the written language forms developed separately after the oral language was well established.

The current thinking however is that Indus is not an even an Indo European language but a Dravidian language. Which to me makes sense with Sankrit entering later or being confined to the north. (ducks for cover)

So we have Hittite, and no Hittite has ever been genetically tested so we know nothing about their genetic relationships with any other regions. Not that genetics has much to do with language. My best guess is that they were... Turkish.

Which brings me back to my main point. That the connection between language and genetics is loose at best, wildly deceiving at worst.

In terms of regions this language group stretched from east asian Tocharian to Western Europe to Sankrit India. It is now truly global. Indo European as a name never made sense and does not make sense now. We need another name for the language family. TransEurasian, Steppish or something similar.

Equally "Indo-European people" makes no sense genetically except as unreliable evidence for an theory. Languages are not people. As attested by the Caribbean, Phillipines and Central America. Even in Ireland/Britain with the so called Saxon/Celtic divide, that wasn't.

English became the lingua franca in some areas because the English suck at languages, had a malleable language and were influential traders.

For all we know the "Indo European" languages spread across the Europe in the Greek classical era as a trading language. Languages can change fast, as Chaucer illustrates along with any number of pidgins. (ducks and runs rapidly away as fast as she can).

The Xiaohe were indeed R1a (with mostly mtDNA C4 IIRC (which is found in the Altai)) but IIRC, Y-DNA R1b is found in the Tarim basin nowadays, even though I can't remember the subclade(s), so... calm down with the certitudes, guys.

Of course we cannot think that people was composed from only one haplogroup. There were many, but, as time passes, it is natural that in one group of people prevails an haplogroup and in another another. I tried only to follow the hg. R1b, but of course R1b and R1a (and I think at least also I/J) were together in many places of the hunter-gatherers of the Siberian corridor.

I remember that there was old data (or claims about data) about 9 out 10 Minusinsk basin Afanisevo samples being YHg R1a, but of course I cannot find that now. Is thre anybody else remembeing that? Was that fake?

I finally figured out why the argument over Yamnaya and horses irritates me so much; it's because the goal posts shifted.

The actual argument is (or was)...

CT and PIE coexisted for a long time and then CT disappeared, so why?

who knows - draw up a list of possibilities like- climate- plague- displaced by PIEetc

and then the *counter" argument to that goes (or went) displacement wasn't possible cos stirrups or bridles or whatever

but that counter argument is bogus (as shown by Numidians or the hundreds of youtube videos of little kids who grew up riding houses galloping around or jumping fences without the aid of bridles, saddles, stirrups etc

so the original argument goes back to where it started - one *possible* option for the disappearance of CT is they were displaced by PIE

by coincidence looking recently at the roots of names used for jewelry-like words like necklace

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=mane

Old English manu "mane," from Proto-Germanic *mano (source also of Old Norse mön, Old Frisian mana, Middle Dutch mane, Dutch manen, Old High German mana, German Mähne "mane"), from PIE *mon- "neck, nape of the neck" (source also of Sanskrit manya "nape of the neck," Old English mene "necklace," Latin monile "necklace," Welsh mwng "mane," Old Church Slavonic monisto, Old Irish muin "neck").

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=collar

c. 1300, "neck armor, gorget," from Old French coler "neck, collar" (12c., Modern French collier), from Latin collare "necklace, band or chain for the neck," from collum "the neck," from PIE *kwol-o- "neck" (source also of Old Norse and Middle Dutch hals "neck"), literally "that on which the head turns," from root *kwel- (1) "move round, turn about" (see cycle (n.)). Late 14c. as "border at the neck of a garment."

so if i was looking for evidence of early horse riding i'd be looking for something like a rope necklace - maybe out of hemp even - too thick/big for humans and maybe with some good luck charms tied on.

There mere fact that a method centuries ago was misused and wrongly applied by a a handful of biased and obviously silly people doesn't prove that the whole method is shit. There are enough crackpots misusing maths to prove Einstein was wrong, yet this doesn't prove maths is BS. Indeed, without PIE reconstruction and regular sound-laws there would be no talk about PIE, or at least not as dead certain as it is now. The method of linguistic archaeology does have some difficulties and problems, and the exact inventory of the PIE vocabulary is controversial in a few points, but this doesn't mean we have to throw it all into the dustbin.

And besides, if you think that Germanic people in general despise Slavs like the Nazis did decades ago, then you are hopelessly stuck in the past, to say the least. I know many Poles who don't know Germans in personal still tend to have reservations towards them, but Germans are not the only Germanic people, and afaik Poles have no problems Danes or Scandinavians. And Guus Kroonen seems to be Dutch judging from his name - since when is there a problem between Poles and the Dutch?

As for the name "Indo-European", that's merely a convention, it doesn't mean a lot. In German the IE language family is sometimes called Indogermanisch as well, because it's a language family that lies between Germanic Icelandic in the west and Indian in the east. But the difference is just in the name, the object of designation is the same.